


Broil

by Cards_Slash



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:24:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9672683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Bones was an alpha, half-an-animal (so his Father said and his Mother believed) keeping his secret just fine in a world full to the brim with people not-like-him.  He signed himself over to the Federation and found himself working as (yet another) doctor while he was lectured on the rules and regulations of Starfleet.  Even that would have been fine if not for Jim-fucking-Kirk who showed up smelling like pure sin.  The smirking bastard was an omega, the perfect match for Bones, and every bit as pissed off about it as he was.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt on tumblr.

The first time Bones heard about omegas, he was six years old with a bloody nose, sitting in the office of his Father’s practice. His legs were kicking in the air because he was _in trouble_ over something or another; a right fine mess dropped off in the waiting room to wait for his father’s justice. They lived in a town so small Bones had memorized the names of three-fourths the people that lived there before he was through with preschool; he thought he knew everyone and half their maladies too. But there he was, sporting blood down his face and the taste of metal in his mouth, when the stranger walked into the clinic. 

The man was fidgeting as he checked in with the sign-in screen, pacing back-and-forth the length of the waiting room with his hands in his pockets or fiddling with the curtains. He was up and down from the chairs and glaring at the communicator that he pulled out of his hand, swiping across the screen as he sighed again and again. 

When the nurse came out to fetch him (after sparing a disapproving sort of look for Bones) the man was all-hushed tones and hurried words saying, “I looked it up, they said this clinic was familiar with omega medicine,” like it was a dirty secret.

Bones wasn’t supposed to listen to the patients or the nurse, but he had big ears like every child. He kept his mouth shut like a steel trap, keeping all the questions stuck in his throat. But he was grounded for six days (for starting a fight or finishing one) with nothing to do but research and read. He sat in his Father’s office at the house reading his text books. 

\--

Bones had the nose of a hunting dog (so said his Granny). In school it gave him headaches, all the unwashed stink of preteens posturing for the top spot. At his house it was the well-known smell of old wood and rain barrels. His Mother had a garden full of savory herbs and his sister had a flower garden full of stinky flowers that looked pretty. 

It was the soda shop after school that got him in trouble. The place with the sugar-sweet and sassafras stink that never-ever failed to end with fist fights. It was full of pretty girls that smelled like sweet-inviting heaven and desperate boys trying out being a man. Bones had read enough medical text books in his life to understand what sex was, but it was his nose and his throbbing heart and his god-damn fists that taught him _attraction_ base and animal.

Bones had no control over the rage, all red and territorial. He spent six months with a constant black eye and busted knuckles before he sat across from his crying Mother and his quietly severe Father. He said, “I don’t like the way they smell.”

His Mother threw her hands up in the air, but his father said, “how do they smell, Leonard?”

He was twelve and pink-cheeked, trying to explain to his grown-man father that the boy smelled like mindless lust and half the girls smelled like intoxicating fertility. It came out in stuttering half-steps, how he didn’t even care about the girls and how he didn’t even want them but he didn’t want anyone else wanting them either. 

Father rubbed his face with his big-big hand and nodded. “Go on to your room, son. I have to talk to your Mother.” 

So he went to his room while his father was hushed-tones-confidential and his Mother was drying her tears on dish towels. His big-eared sister listened in for him, so he heard it from her first (and Father second), “so you’re an alpha, apparently. It’s some kind of animal-human hybrid thing. Dad said both Mom and him had to have been carrying the gene.” She was four years older, sixteen and pretty, with her arms across her chest and she looked at him with an uncertain look. “Dad said we have to be careful with you. He said you can’t be left alone with girls.” 

“That’s stupid,” Bones said. But he could smell her doubt and her blooming fear. She was so close to the door she could make a clean get away if he turned out untrustworthy. “I haven’t changed,” he told her. And she was the first one to look at his face like she believed him, whispering ‘I know’ like a regret but he knew (and she knew, and everyone after her knew) he _had_ changed.

\--

Father started him on a therapy that reduced the more troubling effects of being an alpha. Bones showed up every six weeks to get a hypospray and a lollipop (like he was a child) and he accept it was for the best. When he was fourteen and distracted-enough by anything that looked pretty to his eyes, removing his nose and the boiling-rage of aggression from the mix simplified things. 

But Bones was never allowed to be home-alone with Devon (his own fucking sister) and Mother didn’t like him going to parties or study dates or real dates. She was flighty and nervous around him long after Father had given up reassuring her Bones was fine.

\--

Secrets were dirty little things he kept in his pockets. Bones left home and he left his medical records tucked into his father’s practice. At med school, he was nothing but Leonard McCoy, the boy from some backwoods town in Georgia. He gave himself injections in his dorm room and disposed of the evidence. 

It was beautiful freedom from the fear that choked his childhood home. 

\--

When he was twenty one, freshly full of himself, he just stopped the therapy. It all came back—his sense of smell and his broiling rage. It gave him migraines in closed classrooms and it turned his stomach in hospital rooms. 

Bones could smell infection and cancer while the others were running their tricorder over the patients. He could smell their indecision, their arrogance, their ripe sense of godliness. The instructor was six years past retirement, sporting two-or-three brand new organs and a sense of exhaustion that no amount of sleep or uppers was ever going to cure. 

He lived in hell for _months_ slogging through the migraines and the broiling aggression in his veins. There was boxing for his fists, meaningless sex for his dick, pain relievers for his aching head and long-runs and long-hours in the library for the inexhaustible energy. 

\--

When he was twenty two, he fell in love with a pretty girl. But there were secrets in his back pocket and they grew-and-grew-and-grew.

\--

There was a bias in the medical texts—the kind of thing that was regurgitated from common thought. Alphas were masculine monsters, full of vigor and muscle, all meat and no brain. Omegas were waif-thin and pretty: fragile, emotional and wise. 

But Jim-fucking-Kirk was a disaster of a person. He was bruised and bloody, sneaking onto the recruit shuttle with the stink of arrogance like a cloud of puke circling around his body. There was no mistaking the richness of his scent though, no denying the delightful _invitation_ that saturated the air around him.

If there really was symmetry in the world, Jim-was-an-omega and Bones-was-an-alpha and they should have fit together with no rough edges or gaps.

\--

“So,” was how Jim re-introduced himself after the shuttle, “I can smell you.” He was smug-and-obnoxious in the clinic where Bones was obliged to work while he took still-more-classes. There was no mistaking the ripe smell of him when there was nothing to distract him. 

“I always thought that deodorizing soap was a rip-off.” That hadn’t stopped him from buying it for the past ten years; doubt was no match for hope (after all). He shifted on the rolling stool he was sitting on while Jim smirked at him with his perfect-white teeth and his brilliant blue eyes. His god-damn skin seemed to glow with a halo of perfection like a visual hallucination to match the heavenly smell of him. “But at least I do shower.”

“I could boil myself in body wash and it wouldn’t make a difference,” Jim said. There was fear under the bravado. “I’m in heat—just started this morning. I need it to stop or every man with a dick in a two mile radius is going to try to ride my ass.”

“So you want suppressants.”

“Do you want suppressants?” Jim asked. He drew a breath in through his nose, eyes staring him down like daring him to lie and then he smirked again, “doesn’t smell like you do. Look, if you give me suppressants, they’ll know I’m an omega. Officially discrimination is against all Starfleet policies but most of us are human.” Like Jim could feel his indecision (or maybe smell it) he added, “they know about you?”

The fact was, his father had omitted the diagnosis from his medical records. “It wasn’t medically relevant at the time of my enlistment.” The important difference was that Bones didn’t go into heat and attract everything with a dick to try to mount him three times a year. “There’s no effective alternative for this, Jim. There’s only two approved treatments for omega heats. I can’t give you either one of them without it going on your medical records that you’re—” he waved his hand at Jim’s whole body. “What you are.”

Jim’s jaw was a ticking time bomb. “Well, it was worth a shot. I need the suppressant.” But every word was furious like the sudden smell of it—hot and damp—that filled the room.

\--

The problem wasn’t that Jim existed: a fresh and delicious odor that followed him around the campus. It wasn’t that the little bastard refused care of any other doctor except him. It wasn’t that they were biologically predestined.

It was the cut across Jim’s face when he showed up at Bones’ dorm (not his office) after dark with blood all over his face and hands. It was the carelessness of his loose-joints and his pinked teeth. Jim was a constantly plucked cord, vibrating violence wherever he went. There acid taste of his smell was _offensive_ like an animal’s self-defense stink. But he was, shirtless, clenching his fists while Bones checked his wound in the minimal light of the dorm. 

“What happened,” was after-hours (off the record). 

“He deserved it,” left no room for doubt. 

“Well, next time he deserves it make sure it’s during work hours. Not that I don’t appreciate the loyalty but I like doing this in more sterile environments.” He found a reasonable disinfectant and some tape that would hold the wound together until the morning. He’d probably be seeing Jim’s stupid face in the clinic. His fingers were awkwardly large gripping tiny strips of tape but Jim was staring directly at his face, unblinking and remorseless. 

“If I go to another doctor, they’ll look up my medical records. I’ve see the highlighted text on the PADD. The less people that know, the better I feel.”

Bones rocked back onto his heels to look at Jim more clearly. He smelled like sweat and confrontation, a ripe combination of anger and shame, but every curve of his body was set in direct defiance of anything Bones had to say. “There’s nothing wrong with who you are, Jim.”

“I’m sure that’s what you tell yourself in the morning, only you get to keep your secret and I don’t.” Then he stood up and leaned into Bones’ body, close enough that the heat of his skin was like a warm breath on his neck. “Don’t lecture me, we’re in the same boat.” He grabbed his shirt and threw it over his shoulder. “Thanks doc,” was his parting remark before he excused himself through the door.

\--

The other thing was that Jim could get anyone in the world to have sex with him (except Uhura). It didn’t matter to him (not even a little) because he had no claim on Jim at all. Bones spent half his time looking up research on Omegas (what little existed) trying to figure out if Jim had an unfair advantage. All the research did was point out the obvious—the only person Jim had an advantage over was an alpha like him.

\--

“Doc,” Jim called him when they ended up at the same bar. Bones was working through the latter half of a bad day, intent on applying liquor to get rid of his headache and dull the aggravation that was making him grit his teeth. Jim had glitter in his hair and highlight on his cheeks—it was silver in the low light, but when he turned the right way it looked blue like his eyes. He dropped into the spot across from him with his own drink in his fist. “I didn’t figure you for the gambling sort.”

“Not much gambling when it comes to whisky,” Bones said. 

“You know,” Jim said, “I read a paper on alpha and omega dynamics that says when confronted with a compatible, fertile omega, Alphas become aggressively territorial.” He took a sip of his drink, his pink lips damp with liquor just before his tongue darted out to lick it away. There was sweat on his throat and a tear in his shirt near the shoulder seam. When he smile, the devil was reflecting in his eyes, “so my question is, am I not your type?”

“Are you enjoying this?”

Jim considered him for a minute, blunt fingernails picking at the sticky table top. His lips caught in a half-smile. “No,” he said but the aggression didn’t melt away. “I’m the last man for assuming but there’s no research on Alphas _anywhere_ that says they’re like you. I keep waiting for you to show who you are under that— _placid_ exterior and I keep getting disappointed.”

That was the most ignorant bullshit he’d ever heard. “Why do you want that, Jim?” he asked. He was one-third drunk and six-fifths fed up with watching his temper. He sat up straighter, blocking the pulsating stink of the bodies rubbing against one another beyond the table. “According to the research, you’re a weak-minded nymphomaniac, quietly hungering for the steadying hand of an alpha who really knows how to dick you right.” 

“Fuck you,” Jim spat at him.

“Is that what you want? I hate to assume but you’ve spent a lot of time trying to catch my attention.” It wasn’t the first or even the second but possibly the most impressive turn of seeing the murder in Jim’s eye get so tight and so present that it was just short of a physical assault. Bones smiled all-slow-and-dirty. “Well?”

Jim was going to hit him, it was in every single line of his body. There was violence squeezing out of his every pore. Instead, he ran his tongue across his lips again. “See ya later, doc.”

\--

It was like he was twenty-two again, trying to teach himself to regulate his temper, because there was nothing and nobody that didn’t piss him off every minute of the day. The nurses in the clinic that whined at him about patients. The patients that rattled off symptoms that made no sense. The teachers in classes trying to beat the purpose and practices of Starfleet into his head.

Just, nothing pissed him off like Jim.

\--

Jim showing up in the mess smelling like last-night’s sex. 

Jim showing up in the clinic for minor injuries, sitting there with his perfect skin and his shirt off.

Jim out on the green, playing a friendly game of football with the other cadets. He was pink-faced and _fast_ , getting tackled flat to the ground and rolling in the grass laughing.

Jim was in his room with a broken finger and hickeys on his collar while Bones was still half asleep and fed up. But it was Jim’s smile and his gritted white teeth while Bones set the break. His breathy voice and his just-fucked smell, whispering, “thanks Doc” like a lover’s promise.

\--

Sooner or later, it would have come to a head. It wasn’t that Bones didn’t feel it coming but that he thought it would ooze between the cracks of his control, not explode. 

So it was Jim, at the bar (full of bad choices) getting free drinks from whoever had the credits to spare. It was Bones, in the corner working on his drink steady-and-sure. He was watching because he was a fan of torturing himself. It was easy to sit and drink and marinate in his anger. The rise of it—red, ugly and possessive—was like the music, it built and built but there was no satisfying crescendo. 

Instead it was Jim disappearing between two songs and Bones’ drink running dry.

It was outside the door, around the corner (in an alley) and some stranger with meaty palms and sweaty arms was biting greasy-wet-prints into Jim’s shirt. His fat-tipped fingers rolling the excess of Jim’s shirt into knots as he pawed at him with relentless, clumsy enthusiasm. And Jim was shoulders shoved against a wall, gasping little grunts, staring straight at Bones. There was murder in his eyes but no smile on his face as he flinched when the moron dug his thick knuckles into Jim’s ribs. 

Everything was a scream, a sudden-sharp-shrill sound like a kettle left to boil too long. The sound of steam escaping his ears the only hush over the constant siren. Bones thought (he was going to keep walking) and he was because he’d put his mind to it and there wasn’t anything Leonard-fucking-McCoy couldn’t do if he put his mind to it. He’d tolerated Jim every minute of the day since they met on the shuttle and he’d survive this just as soon as his feet started moving _away_.

But the human smelled like hot dick—all red with lust and no sense—and Jim was staring at him across a three foot distance. There wasn’t a single moment that the little bastard hadn’t smelled like heaven itself presented before him on a platter of gold, except just then. It wasn’t fear, or pain, but something rancid and rotting. 

They were stuck like that, Jim with murder in his eyes getting pawed by a brainless boozer and Bones with his fists creaking for want of a fight. It seemed to him (in brief flashes, in the tiny seconds he had to think) that his whole way of life was being put on trial. It seemed to him that every bit of research ever done on his kind was up for debate in that moment. It was all there, all the evidence laid before the impartial jury:

His sister in his doorway, keeping an open escape telling him he was some kind of animal-hybrid,  
his mother with tears in her eyes never turning her back on him in the house,  
his father (old and steady) with his leathery fingers marking the injection spot,  
and Jim with his pink-fucking smile daring him to act like what he was.

“No,” is what Bones said when all he wanted was the stupid man’s blood on his hands. The man, whoever he was, jerked backward at the word. He was dull-looking with an open mouth and clumsy hands, dragging Jim halfway forward before he got his hands free of the shirt. 

“Move on,” was nothing more than a stupid man’s whine.

Jim was smiling then, both of his fists pulling his shirt down to cover the smooth skin of his belly. He curled is hand around the man’s shoulder and shoved him to the side, “sorry,” he said with no remorse, “I got a better offer.” As if Jim-fucking-Kirk had ever been saddled with so few options this greasy pig of a human was a real contender. It should have been as easy as that, a slow saunter with a smart smirk but Jim was pulled backward.

“Bitch,” was a hollow-sounding thing. It was the spittle of a man denied the prize he wanted. The smell of him was furious: all hot and trembling. Jim must have smelled it on him too, as thick as it was. Like _shit_ , it was a fog that crowded the street in the split seconds before the man's arm reared back and his balled up knuckles crashed into Jim's face. 

Then it was:

Jim's blood red-and-slow, oozing out of his nose  
and the sound of:  
Jim's head cracking against the wall behind him, the inconsistent thud of his elbows trying to arch his body away,  
the grunt of effort of the pig that hit him rolling up pink-and-sweat as his fingers twisted in Jim's shirt,

And there was Bones, only half aware he'd crossed the distance between them. He'd spent months-and-years learning to box. He'd split open the faces of stupid cocky boys talking shit at him across a boxing ring. And it had been hours-then-days-and-weeks and _months_ of his life putting up with Jim. His blood was set to broil and there was nothing but violence left in every bit of his body. So when his fingers slid across the sweat-damp shirt of the no-named asshole who hit (his) Jim, there was no stopping the inevitable. "Hey!" he shouted, drowning in southern drawl. He spun the man around, felt his feet skittering to find balance after the sudden pivot gravity took. The man's eyes were wide-as-coins, and his heartbeat was thready-and-fast, pulsing in his stupid neck. But the smell of him was anger-denied-lust, and he was opening his mouth to smart off about this (or something else) and Bones hit him so hard it it knocked the wind out of him.

He could have done it again (and again, and again) but Jim was there, with his sprawled-open fingers and his thick-strong arms, hugging him from behind to drag him back.

“He said no,” Bones was more a belch of noise than a shout. Both his fists were around Jim's wrists, trying to keep him in place or pull him off (it didn't make sense either way) as he was pulled back and twisted around. Bones wanted to shake him off, to finish what he started and he was agitating his body like an old-fashion washing machine but it came to a sudden stop with:

“Come on, doc,” was Jim’s voice against the back of his ear, “you got him, come on.” And the smell of Jim, so close and inviting.

\--

They walked without talking, Jim occupying a safe space a foot to the side. They walked like they were running—away from the bar and back toward the campus. Jim was grinning like whistling with his head ducked and his arms swinging at his side. Bones was furious-and-hot-and- 

“What the fuck do you want from me?” exploded at the edge of the campus, just before they crossed the line between idiot civilians and civilized students. It was knocked off-center, it was doubt like his Mother’s trembling voice telling him to just wait outside for his father. It was the heady rush of free-falling, those first awful months after he’d quit the therapy. He was _shaking_ with unanswered rage like he hadn’t in years and Jim was—

Jim was standing there with his shoulders lifting and dropping. He was pink-tongue on red-lips, thumbs hooked into his pockets, looking sideways but not down, saying, “I want to not want to fuck you,” like he’d been trying every bit as hard as Bones had. Like he was just as angry about it, like it was as _unfair_ to him. The whole fucking disaster since they sat next to each other on that shuttle: Jim smelling like a barroom brawl and Bones marinating in the morning-after cure. “But I do,” was bold-blue-eyes looking right at him. It was the confident jut of his chin when the words went quiet at the end. “I really, really fucking want to.”

“We have a choice,” was Bones’ last defiance. It was the only peace he could offer, the last attempt to stop the inevitable.

Jim’s smile went soft, the space between them condensed into a matter of inches. “Both of our choices are shitty,” was as close to agreeing as Jim could get, “but we do have them.” And a beat later, “choices,” like the statement needed clarifying. 

\--

It should have been easy—as simple as biology, but they were soured to the idea of it even after they’d found their way to Bones’ dorm room. Jim was just inside the doorway the way he’d been with broken fingers and bruised ribs. Bones was next to the bed, feeling like the whole thing was a waste of fucking time. The white-hot-rage and the pure-red-lust that had seemed so urgent in theory had gone tepid in reality.

“Look,” was Jim (with all his clothes on), “help me out here: do you actually want to fuck me or not?” 

“That’s a stupid question, Jim.” But Jim was staring at him, hands on his hips, eyebrows up to his hairline just waiting on an answer. Bones rolled his eyes, “yes. I want to fuck you. Of course I want to fuck you—even if you weren’t a god damn omega I’d want to fuck you.”

And Jim smiled, the slow-shift in his scent. The bright-warm stink of his arousal overcoming the stagnant silent air between them. He was licking at his lips again, shifting his body to accentuate the hardly-noticeable curve where his hips widened. There was no shame in him (not even the inclination to fake any) when he pulled his own shirt off over his head. “Last chance to say no, doc.” When he was close enough, Bones caught him in both fists and dragged him forward. They were animals, crashing into one another with stupid-wet-mouths. 

\--

“Fuck,” was Jim on his belly in the aftermath. Bones was sitting on the floor by the bed, trying to work out how he’d got there. Every muscle he had was liquid as hot jelly, and his skin was vibrating out of tune. Jim’s skin was blood-red from exertion, his hair soaked-through with sweat. His arm was hanging off the bed as he grinned at him, all obscene white teeth and sly blue eyes. “So, you think it’d be like that if we did it again?” 

Bones’ back was sticking to the wall when he leaned on it, his bare ass was cold from the floor and his dick was useless to him for an hour at least. His lungs were still burning from trying to catch his breath and Jim was grinning at him asking for a do-over already. “Maybe,” he gulped between one breath and the next. “There’s not a lot of published study on the topic.”

Jim rubbed his palm across the sweat on his face and wiped it off again on Bones’ blankets. He would have protested but they were ruined with sweat and semen and fresh-ripped holes from his-or-Jim’s fingers tearing them to shreds. “So, we should,” Jim said, “for science.”

“Right,” Bones agreed. “For science.”

\--

Fucking Jim became a past time between trips to the library and clinic hours. They weren’t romantic in their sexual-sprints; Jim showed up at his door with his pants already unzipped in between classes and PT. They fucked like perfect strangers, enjoying the unique perfection of the act itself.

\--

It could have gone on forever, fucking Jim like a personal hobby. Bones had taken up building models in the years before that fight in the soda shop; he remembered the smell of the old wood and the fresh glue as he stuck the little bits together piece by piece. It had been a painstaking act of devotion, crafting space ships out of tiny wood chips and yet he’d built them one after another. Jim was an idle thing like that, something to fill long hours of the day with. 

Until it was, “I’m just going to take a nap before I go,” on a rainy afternoon. Jim’s slow-cooling skin taking up space on Bones’ bed. It was a glorious idea in the chill of the room, set to the soothing soundtrack of rain beating his window. 

But it was, “it’s just one drink, doc. You can go have one drink with me. I promise you can fuck me when we get back, come on I told this guy I’d meet him.” And it was Bones rolling his eyes saying, “stop calling me doc.”

It turned into Jim wearing sleeping pants on his bed, legs crossed and eyes down—reading PADD after PADD of regulations and best practices. Jim was a study in contradiction, with soft skin laid over hard muscle. Bones made constellations out of his scars and odd spots, drawing up imaginary monsters with his fingertips while Jim studied.

They fell into the routine of it without trying, Jim showing up after dinner with books to read and Bones arriving unannounced (and uninvited) to Jim’s weekly chess tournament in the study room on the second floor of the library. They were arguing politics while they crossed the distance from Jim’s flawless chess victory to Bones’ empty dorm room. 

It was arguments that stretched out over lazy fuck days, and heated up in the hallways between classrooms. It was Jim throwing a temper tantrum over the Kobayashi Maru, all hard fists and clenched teeth. They fucked like strangers for a week straight, working out Jim’s rage and leaving bruises like bite marks as they went.

\--

There was literature on it—hidden away in archives, tucked on dusty shelves in books with real paper pages. The science was muddy at best, romanticized like gothic novels, how noble and natural and pure love was between an alpha and omega. Jim found a book of essays in a pawn shop selling crap on the internet. He had it delivered to Bones’ dorm.

Jim read it to him, stuttering over the flow of the words when they got ridiculous. “An alpha’s primary drive is to protect his mate, in our study we found that given the choice between six fertile, willing, compatible omegas, the alpha will choose the same one during each mating season even if they have no contact outside the confines of the study.” Every word was disbelief, a hardly-contained scoff with Jim’s eyebrows bunched up like caterpillars on his forehead. “Instinct!” was Jim’s finger raising in objection, “has been found to overrule previously-defined preferences regarding body type, personality and even gender when alphas are finally able to locate their perfect mate.” He mumbled some shit, “it is the opinion of this scientist that this is an indication of a deeper sense of loyalty than any human is capable of, given time this loyalty could only lead to a fuller feeling of love. Indeed, it appears that alphas and omegas are the only ones capable of true love.” Jim was scowling at the words, "this is bullshit," like it needed to be said, "absolute bullshit."

“Roll over,” Bones said, “I want to express my loyalty to your ass.”

Jim dropped the book off the side of the bed, easy as anything, pulling Bones up to kiss him with a sharp-and-biting sort of laugh in his throat.

\--

Spock was a surprise; a strange interloper in the story they were building up between them. Bones didn’t hate him on sight but he would have if being an alpha had given him the ability to see the future. 

Jim didn’t deserve Spock. He didn’t deserve to be called out in front of his peers, he didn’t deserve to have his father’s death thrown in his face. He didn’t deserve Spock’s side-eye-stares and maybe that was (or wasn’t) the reason Bones dragged Jim’s ass onto the Enterprise. The anger lasted him just long enough for Jim to find his way onto the bridge; and it got lost in the chaos that followed.

\--

Jim had broken ribs and a battered face, one arm curved around his body and blood crusted at the corner of his mouth. But he was a hero—the best of them all—in the aftermath of the Narada’s demise. Jim was punch-drunk and giddy sitting on the end of a biobed smelling like fresh hell, saying, “you love me,” like a revelation. “You grumpy old fuck, you love me.”

Bones had spent _hours_ of his life in agony, dragging on like years, wondering if Jim (or he, or anyone) was going to survive the whole ordeal. It seemed insignificant and stupid to worry over things like _feelings_ , but he was too exhausted to give a shit, so it was, “of course I do, what do you want a medal?”

Jim’s smile was a quick-smirk, cut across his face. He said, “If you’ve got one.” It was his slow-tongue across his ragged lips and crinkles at the edges of his eyes. “I love you too, you know.” He must have because he hardly objected when Bones shoved him flat against the biobed. 

“Remind me later,” Bones said. “After I finish fixing,” he motioned at Jim’s entire body, “ _this_ , and I’ve gotten some sleep. We’ll celebrate.”

Jim was giggling with curled fingers and bent knees, smiling up at him. “I’ll bring the champagne.”


End file.
